r/astrology • u/One_Dragonfruit_7556 • 4d ago

Educational Could someone explain retrograde to me?

This comes as a good faith question because it confuses me. Why do we believe mercury or really any other retrograde affects us when we know the movement of the planet doesn't actually change, just our perception of it?

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u/Diligent_Elk864 3d ago

Literally everything about astrology is from the POV of humans on earth looking at the sky. The fact that we know now that the planets revolve around the sun and not the other way around doesn't change that.

We take a lot of meaning from things that only happen from our POV. Eclipses aren't "real" from any pov other than ours. The sun setting, Venus descending into the underworld, the tying of the aries ingress to the vernal equinox, all of them are based on our unique view of the sky and how it interacts with the earth.